According to a Thursday report in the Platformer tech magazine, Instagram will stop features that users have campaigned against and said made the social network too similar to TikTok. Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, famous sisters, were among the most outspoken users this week who wrote messages on social media urging the firm to “make Instagram Instagram again” and quit attempting to compete with TikTok. The catchphrase originated from a change.org petition that, as of late Thursday, had amassed more than 229,000 signatories. “Let’s go back to our roots with Instagram and remember that the intention behind Instagram was to share photos, for Pete’s sake,” the petition read. In a video posted to Twitter earlier this week, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri addressed the criticism and stated that the features were still being developed and were being tested on a limited group of users. The short-form video was given more attention, shown on full-screen as on TikTok, and posts from random people were recommended. “I’m glad we took a risk,” Mosseri was quoted as saying Thursday in an interview with Platformer’s Casey Newton. “But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup.” “If we’re not failing every once in a while, we’re not thinking big enough or bold enough,” Mosseri said. As people share and seek out video snippets more frequently, Mosseri contended that the move to more video would occur even if the service remained unchanged. “If you look at what people share on Instagram, that is shifting more and more to video over time,” Mosseri said. “We are going to have to lean into that shift.” In a statement made at a Wednesday earnings conference, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg reinforced that assertion by stating that more people are viewing videos online. In order to compete with TikTok for consumers’ attention, corporations like Meta and Google have introduced their own short-form video sharing platforms.
